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THE 



REMONSTRANCE 



THE CITIZENS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 



THEIR DELEGATES IN CONVENTION, 



THE PEOPLE OF THE UIVITEII STATED, 



THE LEGISLATURES OF THE SEVERAL STITE 



ES. 



OPPRESSIONS, MANIFOLD AND GRIEVOUS 



suFVKiiKD fuo:m thk 



JJ MISRULE OF THE NOW RULING MAJORITY IN CONGRESS. 



August, 1S40. 



WASHINGTON: 

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER OFFICE. 

1S40. 



'OH 






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The Citizens of the city and county of Washington and the county of Alexau' 
dria, in the District of Columbia , by their Delegates in Convention Assembled^ 
to the People of the United States^ and their several Legislatures. 



Fellow-Citizens: It is on no common occasion that we address you. Our 
feelings have been outraged, our rights trampled upon, and our interests sacri- 
ficed by men acting as your Representatives, and directly responsible to you 
for ail their acts in that character. Deaf to the voice of justice, regardless of the 
most solemn constitutional injunctions, insensible to the common charities that 
bind man to man, seeking to promote their party interests, and to gratify their 
private passionS; they have, in the wantonness of an ephemeral power derived 
from you, dared to treat us as slaves. 

From the unrighteous exercise of this power we appeal from them to 
you, from the servant to his master. Redress is, thank God, yet in your 
hands. The spirit of tyranny that would crush us has not yet, with success, raised its parrici- 
dal arm against you. 

Flear, judge, and act upon our unvarnished statement. 

With you we are the descendants of men who achieved their liberties against foreign tyrants 
with their blood ; with you we are members of the same glorious confederacy which guarantied 
these liberties by a Constitution established by the People of the United States, " to form a more 
perfect union," establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, 
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty." 

With you we bear the same burdens, and enjoy the same rights, subject to the exclusive legis- 
lation of Congress. Exclusive of whatl Clearly of the States of which the District previously 
composed apart ; State jurisdiction, as such, was displaced, and simply supplied by that of Con- 
gress. It was not intended, it could not be intended, without a monstrous political anomaly dis- 
graceful to the venerable framers of the Constitution, to confer on Congress the sweeping powers 
of a despot. The powers conferred were indubitably, therefore, limited by the rights uni- 
versally enjoyed by the whole People of the United States, and more especially by the safeguards 
and bulwarks provided by the Constitution itself. Within this sphere, Congress, taking the place 
of the State Lt^gislatures who had ceded their jurisdiction, may rightfully act ; beyond it every 
exercise of power is tyranny. 

Under the inviolable safeguard of this broad segis, had the rights of the People, over whom 
exclusive jurisdiction was ceded by the States to Congress, been placed, when the District of 
Columbia was established as the seat of Government, and the city of Washington founded: such 
were the essential conditions of the compact of cession, necessarily implied and understood by the 
States who made the cession, by the Congress who accepted it, and by the People of the District 
who acquiesced in it. All the States and all the people of the States became virtual guaranties 
to the faithful and just fulfilment of those conditions ; and as they retained in their own hands 
the plenary power and the efficient means of executing their duties as guaranties, through the 
control reserved directly to themselves alone over their own servants and representatives, to whom 
they chose to delegate this most important and responsible power of exclusive legislation; so 
they held that power and those means in sacred trust for the benefit of the People, over whom 
they sent delegated servants and representatives to exercise the power of legislation. When they 
bestowed upon the infant city, founded by themselves, the name of the most illustrious of theas- 
serters and defenders of public liberty and independence, they raised a visible monument to his 
fame and virtues; but it had been no better than an opprobrious insult to both had it been set 
apart from all the wide limits of the Republic to be desecrated as the chosen seat of despotic and 
lawless power, or, what is practically the same thing, of unlimited and irresponsible legislation. 

Citizens from the several States repaired to it in full confidence that their rights and interests 
would remain inviolate; nay, more, in the firm belief that those rights and interests would be the 
last to be invaded which were shielded by the collected wisdom and virtue of the nation. For 
a long tract of years they had no reason to complain of any disappointment to these golden 
hopes. They did not acquire wealth, but they were contented. Industry was crowned with its 
usual reward, the state of things was pr^igressive and promised gradual improvement. Govern- 
ment, it is true, did not do many things which the People expected ; but as its members, Execu- 
tive as well as Legislative, were highminded men, of exalted character, there was little dis- 
satisfaction ; and our community formed a common family, over which simplicity, hospitality, 
and friendship presided. 



Above all, a spirit of independence generally prevailed. The great men of that day, and among 
the foremost, after the Father of his Country, a Jefferson and a Madison, who had earned 
their eminence by their virtues and their talents, valued lilierly too highly to deny to their fel- 
low-men, and especially to those with whom they were in daily intercourse, its nestimable bles- 
sings. They would as soon have invited to their hospitable tables their own slaves as the 
vassals of a District crouching to Executive power and bereft of the proudest attributes of 
humanity. No; they who have not forgotten those illustrious men — and who that once knew 
them can forget them 1 — know that it was their pride and highest gratification to cherish, among 
all theirfellow-cilizens, a spirit of personal independence. 

Such was the political school in which we were educated ; in which the right to think for our- 
selves on all the measures of the Government, and to express those opinions among ourselves and 
diffuse them among the People, was respecteil as inherent in freemen, and inculcated as a 
paramount duty. There was nothing extraordinary in this. It was to be expected that the 
penman of the Declaration of Independence— which in its commencement declares: "We hold 
these truths to be but self-evident, that all men are created equal; they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness" — would practically illustrate the sublime precept he had propounded. 

Our sons imbibed these sentiments from our lips, which were confirmed by a Monroe and 
an Adams, in whose hearts the holy fire of the Revolution glowed with undiminished force. 
They and their legislative coadjuters were the friends of the District. They did not signalize 
their friendship by favors — it was not expected that they would— but by acts of justice. The 
District asked no more. Large sums of public money, indeed, have been expended within 
the District, but the objects on which they have been expended were principally for the accommo- 
dation and benefit of the members of the Government and the citizens of the whole Union or of 
the adjacent States. 

Thus far our citizens maintained, without reproach or contumely, their erect political attitude. 
They felt and acted as freemen— thinking, judging, and expressing their opinions as citizens of 
the United States, on public men, and public mtasures, without rebuke. 

But a new era was at hand. The tide of popular feeling raised to the Chief Magistracy a 
military chieftain. He came into power with no unfriendly feelings towards the District, but, 
falling into the hands of those who, for personal ends, as events showed, had advocated his elec- 
tion, a broad line of discrimination was drawn between our citizens; all were dismissed from 
ofl&ce and confidence who did not surrender their judgments to the reigning power, and their 
places filled, if not exclusively, principally, by men of whose personal merits, either generally or 
particularly, it becomes us not to speak; but of the notorious policy that dictated the selection of 
them for places of public trust, we may ?ay that, as, in all instances their indispensable quali- 
fication, 60, in too many, their sole qualification was a factious xeal for the existing Adminis- 
tration, or a blind and indiscriminate subserviency to the will of its chief. Political intoler- 
ance descended to the petty tyranny of social persecution. Every man, however retired his 
habits or unambitious his views, who did not proclaim his adhesion to this ignoble vassalage, was 
denounced as an enemy. It is scarcely necessary to add that the inevitable effect of this injus- 
tice was to subvert our social harmony, and, from being a united, to make us a divided people. 
Its further effects were soon seen in arresting improvements, in destroying confidence, and in the 
loss of a valuable portion of our citizens, who were driven to more propitious scenes for the exer- 
cise of theirindustry and talents. 

The feelings of the most respectable portion of our community were shocked ; alarm was sub- 
stituted for confidence; but hope still remained — a reasonable hope, founded on the lofty and in- 
dependent attitude of the two Houses of Congress. There we beheld, as we thought, a 
noble phalanx of virtue and talents, prepared to arrest impending evil. This, however, was but 
a fleeting illusion* The elements of a political storm were brewing,. which, in its indiscrimi- 
nate rage, was destined to menace with destruction the proud charter of a nation's rights. If 
it has not yet accomplished this end, it has for a season, a long season, subverted the happiness 
and prosperity of the People. By a prodigal expenditure of public money, by the avowed and 
practised precept that the spoils belong to the victor, it has spread a corruption through the 
nation that threatens a total prostration of morals. The Executive seizure of the public treasure 
in the legal custody of the Bank of the United States, and the application of it to the gratification 
of political friends and the furtherance of party objects, have, by one fell blow, destroyed the 
currency of the country, and enlisted an army of sycophants whose life-blood is drawn from the 
vitals of the nation. 

In beholding these scenes, we stood in two relations : in that of citizens of the United States, and 
citizens of the District of Columbia. 

As citizens of the United States, we partook of the burdens common to all, and were entitled 
to a share of the benefits common to all. Any abuse of power felt by the People at large fell 
with equal weight on us. With you, fellow-citizens, we labored for our daily bread, and whatever 
took from you deprived us likewise of the fruits of our industry. We formed part of a great com- 
munity, to whom a sound currency, ramified through all its departments, was as essential an ele- 
meftt of prosperity as the blood that circulates in the veins is essential to the life and health and 
action of every member of the human body. Hence, on this vital subject, we felt as you felt. 
Our exertions to support oar families and promote our interests were rewarded with blasted 
hopes. 



overnruent. 
State Govern- 



As citizens of the District of Columbia, we held other relations to the Federal G 
tZTllLklTwrr' ^'V^'. infliction of wrongs, you had your own Su 

^or^Sriurh'lestr;;/'^^'^'"^^' t.r better ti.es. UnfoLnate.y thesi ti.esSn^^t'" 
The 18th of February last is a day memorable in our annals. On that day the peoole of 
c^;' "^ "".'""^ ^'"'?"^ °'^^-' P'^^^'"^^' ''^^^^"^bled in a strength never before wituP Jed '^One 
common feeling seemed to pervad. the whole community, wfth the exception, prindpally of 
hose connected with, or dependent on the bounty of, .he Government. Thrzeaftha brouahf 
t7L7T"! ""' T ^^Z P'-^^^^^Ji-^-' ^-'"P-'^^i -iih the calm d gnily ofTeeln xt 
aggravated abuses of the General Government, and evils, if possibLtill grea er^mnendina 
aroused hem, not to phrenzy, but to a resolute delerminatiorl to express, as c t^zenl of tl^eTniJe^d 
di^? not 'v ^"";r'"^ r^'^l' "^'" ^"'' P^'''^^ rnea^mes. If they wanted-which surely "hey 
n thP fi7«r ^-7 'J",? ^"' "'^ ''''''''' °^ '^''' constitutional right, ,hey would have foundft 
n the first article the amendments lo the Constitution, which provides that " Con/rei "ha 
make no law abridging the freedom of speech,' or of the press, or the right of the Peop eleace 
tinn^nf Vrr '-'".^ lo petition the Government for a redress of grievances ;" and in the expo"- 
" It ouAt aho"trh". ^^ !'' enlightened authors of the Federalist, who,'in its def.!^ce'sa; : 
It ought al»o to be remembered that the citizens who inhabit the couniry at and near the sea 
of Government wiil, in all questions that affect the general liberty aifd prosperity have the 
same interest with those who are at a distance; and That they will stand readTlo sound he 
alarm wnen necessary, and to point out the actirs in any pernicious projec The ^"1^: na- 
Union'' ^''^P^^'^'^"^ messengers of intelligence to the most ren?ote inhabitant's of t^'e 

stiJrt o/TrrT'"'^^'^^ ""^ f '"'"'"'' ^i^^^ed by no imaginable interest more selfish than the in- 
sunct or selt-nreservation. or ess r.nmnrphon= «o » k^« .k« „;f„i :„. .r .1 • '. 




spii 

^[!^f'„, "' • ;, 7 "-"/--, "-u =^u.ju iiiuumrm, anu poinr, out the actors in many per- 
nicious pro ects ; and more especially ,n one favorite destructive project which has since under 
Ex cuuve dictation, become the law of the land. They went a 'ste^ further, and dared nxom 

Ln of IZ\T.%""^' ' r'^"'' '''"''^^' '^' ^^^™^^^>°" °f M^«^'^ Van Buren and thee?rc- 
lion ot William Henry Harrison. 

For the discharge of this constitutional duty we have been denounced and held up as fit sub- 
jocts of punishment; we have been despoiled of our rights ; common justice has been denied us- 
ourinerests have been sacrificed, and our character impeached, by the very men andin^he 
''N?i'7',r''^'' ^^' '^l ^'^''''^'^'^^^ f«^ ^h« Protection 'of those' interests and that cLracter! 
rjothing bu. the dictates of commanding duty could have prompted us to sound this alarm So 

heacTnfV/ir'n''"^ '"T'V ''' '"'"'7^' ^"^ have every reason for conciliating those at the 
head ofaflTars Our s^Kial relations to them, the benefits which they have the power to be- 
stow or withhold the habitual respect in which we have heretofore held them, all unite to at- 
tach us to them. Powerful must be the cause that can break these ties, and convert our natural 
regard into poll ical hostility. Look into your own breasts, and-you will find that cause It is 
because we are American citizens, more devoted to the cause of liberty than to our sordid in-, 
terests that we spurned the insidious snares that encompassed us. We claim no exclusive 
merit for our conduct ; we have only done our duty ; we have acted towards you as v. e have no 
doubt you vvould have acted towards us under like circumstances. 

But the time was to come, and it has now arrived, when we were to feel the lash for not 
sacnfacing our principles to the infatuated policy of the Executive. We have been visited with 
the vengeance of misrule, and bid under the menace of other such visitations, in points the 
most vita! to any community that has grown and flourished in a land of law and liberty and 
umer every encouragement by which equality of rights, security of person and property,' and 
all the freedom of MKlividua! action compatible with regular polity, can stimulate the faculties 
ot civilized man to enterprise and industry. First, in the very foundations of trade and com- 
raerce ; in the very elements essential to the life of every branch of meritorious enterprise and 
honest industry; es..ential to the prosperity of all the intimately related and mutually depend- 
ent professions and calhngs of every citizen striving for wealth, or competence, or subsistence- 
Whether emp.oyed in commerce, in agriculture, in mechanic' trades, or in the operative labor 
necessary to all. and equally deserving with all. of protection and mcouragement : so far affect- 
"Jf •• '"f'''='" ^":? well-being of this en-ire District. Secondly, in matters more immediately 
affecting the city of Washington, but of little less importa'^ce (o eve'ry citizen of the Union 
whose duty, business, or pleasure, may draw him to the seat of Government; to which a free' 
convenient and safe concourse of citizens from all quarters of the Union entered largely intj 
th€ original design of the establishment. That city has been attacked, in its most indispensable 



privii..cs with a blow, acc.denially frustrated for the present by a ^oo.eagcr overreach ng of ^i^^^ 
™!. h t to be in no bng time mended and renewed with a surer aim. The attempt has been 
^'Jh ^' /' .l"r, ',?rsevered in. and is yei to be made the test of party strength and 




can People. 

Banks, and the banking system^ 
and unmeasured denunciation 



pal p)lice 

meetings of sZai.es. fellow-citizens, how universally and through what a long tract of 

nufhi torv tf/esVlte^^^^^^^^ -'^^ ^^e essence of public and private 

rnancflnd pervaH all pecuniary trausactions,Wbl.c and private, m the affa.rs of the Amen- 

stem genera ilv, have but recentW become objects of indiscriminate 

1 with the party who have selected them for their most favored and 

mominent topics. The exciting causes of provocation against thosejn.titutions are ^I" ^ ^^'^^^J'^" 

f th^Do icv most ardently pursued by the very party who, now, that they see and feel the fa.lure 

^hich^al pomica forecastVnd experience had foreseen and foretold from the ^^^.u'T^^Z^^^^^^ 

hniirnn he olan of diviner t he larcrest ex pansion and most exaggerated influence I 

wol now v"th; overflowings of their disappointment in a war ot obloquy --XT:^TZI 
Zhist the.e same institutions ; of which, whatever actual perversions or abuses ^i^;;^'^^;"^.;^ 
the conseauence of political exp.=rimenls, injudiciously conceived and rashly tried, upon the estab- 
lished orTraml ? gular progression of affairs. Whatever excesses in the extension of the hanking 
system or perversions ofits primary purposes, the last six years have witnessed, are clearl> traced 
UD to tlTe sch.rne of convorting it into a political engme, not of an enbghtened or Ifg'ti^'^;^ 
finarTce but of an inlerested and narrow amhition. Varied, and desperate as varied have been 
fhe exoe ent to shun or to repair the mortifying discredit resulting from the palpable failure of 
hese pi^ e!. After tampering with the currency in all modes but that o preserving or restoring 
ts .ound ie^s ; after the deposite and distribution of the public money had been changed and sh ft- 
Td dl it has become difficult to say whether it be here, or there, or anywhere; -f ^^^^^^^f^^^^^^ 
snecfics as "specie-circulars" and the like inventions; the last resource %^^^%^^ ^'YfU^rr. 
c?us.de atainst^anks and the banking system generally ; and, though the first fury of the cru- 
Tders haf "ufen upon us, there is no part of the country safe from their ravages, unless they 
ran be disloibred from this the centre of their operations. , . . , i ,^^^ 

• Jin adve ting, as we are about to do, by way of illustration, succinctly to the ^'f^y ^"^, Pf^^? 
of the banking system in this country, afd to the agency o political men and '^g/^^^^^^^ f <1^.^^ 
from the time of the Revolution to the present day, in establishing, extending, and eonsohdaung 
he sy tern^t is very far from our design to intimate any abstract opinion of our own, or to ca i 
upanTo'^^^^^^^ practical action in reference to questions that have been agitnted '" ^^ay« R^^^^ 
or now rlised upon the constitutionality or expediency ef this or that bank, or upon the original 
neces^tiTnd wisdom of the banking system in general, or upon its alleged vices and abuses novv 
orTt'.ny former time: our sole purpose is to develop and illustrate the motives and objects of the 
In from Xm we have suffered deep wrong, whose conduct we have a clear right to arraign 
STforfyou, with a view to effect their dismission from power or a stop ^^/''^'^/^.'^'•"'f,;/"^..^^ 
place in a clear view the vast reach of the mischiefs necessarily resulting from »h"r po ic3'--n.is. 
chiefs now visited with unmitigated severity on us, and sure, unless seasonably checked, to reach 
you it not precisely in tlie same form, yet in the same degree, and from the same causes 
^ The establishment of the first bank in the Union was during our revolutionary contest ongi- 
naUng wUh Congres.s, and expressly sanctioned by several States ; and ,t powerfully aided our 
alorious cause It still survives in credit under the panoply of Pennsylvania. 
'Ifte the adoption of the Constitution, among. tne first measures o the fo;---"^-- 
the establishment of a Bank of the United States, with the approbation of the t ather of bis Coun- 
trv after huvMu. most anxiousW reasone .1 ont and scrupulously weighed h.s judgment on the con- 
stit'ut onal-.ty and expediency of the measure. Thi« institution, notwilhs andmg a powerfu re- 
e tance originallv presented'to it on constitutional grounds, was universally recognise, and used 
as an establlhment of unquestioned validity and competency for all the purposes of its creation, 
TyalUhe authorities, Executive, Legislative, and Ju.licial, of the United States and of the sev- 
eraf States, throughout the whole of Mr. jKFrKRSON's ad.niriistration, and during thcMwofir.t 
vPars of Mr Madison's, when it expired by the limitation of its charter. In addition to its prac> 
TcTrecorn .'ion by all departments of the Executive Government, and their active co-operation 
n the exercise of il norpora-e functions, it received distinct legislative recognitions and confirm^ 
aUons durng the Presidency of Mr, Jefferson, in two acts of Congress, approved and signed 
by hm in 1804 an 1 1807, Extending its powers and providng additional safeguards to its o,..ra- 
?! Near the close of the war, irfMr. Madison', administration the exper.^^^^^^ 



terine a ne-:- bank, with a capital more than three times that ot the former DanK, passeu u,ui 
Houses of Congres. and was' returned by the President with objections go.'^'g exclusive y^ 
.^me particular prov. ions contained or omitted in the bill, and expressly '• vvaiv.ng the questior, 
;? const uUonafauthoritv, as being precluded, in his judgment, by repeated recognition. u>ad.r 



varied circurnstancest, in acts of the Lejislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the Gov- 
ernment, accompanied by indications, in different modes, of a concurrence of the general will of 
the mtion," At the next session of Congress, the year after the war, a second bill passed the 
tw.) Houses of Congress, establishing the late Bank of the United States, with a capital of thir- 
ty-five millions; and this, being found clear of Mr. Madison's objections to the former bill, 
was approved and signed by hun. This bank also, through the whole term of its existence, 
including seven years of Presiilent Jackson's administration, received as many and as unequiv- 
ocal recognitions by all the auihorities, executive, legislative, and judicial, and as active co-oper- 
ation of the Government in the exercise of Its corporate powers, as trie former bank. That Presi- 
dent, in his first annual message to Congress, looking so:ne six or seven years ahead to the ex- 
piration of the charter, and apparently anxious to provide in due seasi.n fur that event, recom- 
mended the subject to the atien'.ion of Congress, with some not very distinct reference to certain 
objectionable provisions in the existing charter; and then fjr the first time broached the project 
of a bank on a far grander scale and far more national in its frame than had ever before been 
thought of — the project of " a National Bank founded upon the credit of the Government and its 
revenues." This project of a " National Bank," with more or less specificatious of its nature and 
objects, and the necessity of seasonable and immediate attention to the question of rechartering 
the then existing bank, are reiterated again and again in his subsequent messages ; in which, 
some time before his final breach with the managers of that institution, some symptoms of in- 
cipient dissatisfaction at their conduct begin to appear. In one of those messages, where he insists 
on the propriety nf leaving the channels ot circulation to be filled with the paper of Slate banks^ 
and upon the efficacy of his " national bank" lo check any possible exuberance in their issues, 
we have the first glimpse of the scheme, afterwards carried out with such consequences as we 
have all seen, for the adoption of the State banks into the special patronasre of the Federal Gov- 
ernment, ami of setting them up as rivals, challenging superior utility and favor, to the Bank of 
the United States. In this scheme the banks of i his District, though not named, are to be taken 
as necessarily included ; and one of them was afterward*, of course, selected as a Government 
depoaite bank. When, some years afterwards, he found occasion to quarrel outright with the 
Bank of the United States, repeatedly and perseveringly impeached the legality and purity of its ad- 
ministration, and continually pressed upon Congress hostile measures against it, he found both 
Houses of Congress, in one of wtiich, at least, there was a decisive majority of his political 
party, generally thinking and acting with him in politics, yet steady and consistent throughout 
in support of the bank in all its official relations with the Government, as an institution sur- 
roundf^d by the most indef-asible of legal sanctions to it? existence and its functions. Presi- 
dent Jackson himself, in his most vehemewt denunciation cf the administration of the bank, 
and in his most pressing instances to Congress for withdrawing the Government, as far as prac- 
ticable, from all connexion with it, makes an express reservation of points wherein the charter 
should be found to have pledged the public faith to the bank ; and so, admitting the compe- 
tency of the charter to bind the public faith and tie up the hands of Congress, he admitted the 
irrepealableefficacy of the chatter under the Constitution. The manifest convenience of the bank 
to the Government, and its utility to the People, he distinctly admitted ; and the indispensable 
necessity of some " national bank" he uniformly insisted on ; till he hit upon the new expedient 
of substituting Slate banks for all the purposes of bank machinery in the management of Fed- 
eral revenue and finance, and the sole suppliers of all the paper circulation of the country, 
without the check of any national bank, which he once thought necessary to restrain their op- 
erations within safe limits. 

The committee appointed by the House of Representatives in March, 1832, to investigate the con- 
dition and conduct of the bank, and inquire intoalleged violations of its charter, the majority of 
which wascomposed of gentlemen from among the most zealous supporters of President Jackson's 
administration, and who had rather run ahead of him in open criminations, though not perhaps in 
the known tenor of his private feelings towards the bank, conclude a voluminous and long labored 
report, teeming with charges of grave import against the bank directors, without recommending 
any action whatever upon those charges, but rather maciion; they content themselves with saying 
" that the bank ought not, ai present, to berechartered :" thntit seems "most judicious [contrary, as 
it seemed, tothc whole tenor of the President's judgment and most pressing instance-^] not to ac^ upon 
the question of rechartering this institution, or of chartering any other national bank, until the pub- 
lic debt shall have been paid off, and the public revenue adjusted to the measure of Federal expen- 
ditures ;" thus treating the question of a recharter of the existing bank, or of a new charter to 
another, as one of mere expediency, depending on temporary circumstances. This report, in the 
course of two or three months, was answered by a bill more in accordance with the President's 
recornmendations, passing both Houses of Congress, for the extension and continuance of the 
charter of the then existing bank, with some modifications. In the President's veto message, re- 
turning this bill with his objections, he sets out with admitting that a Bank of the United States 
is " convenient to the Government and useful to the People ;" but that '' some of the powers and 
privileges of the existing bank are unauthorized bv the Constitution, subversive of the lights of 
the Stales, aallaa gerous to the liberties of the People;" and he then goes on to detail the par- 
ticular provisions of the charter deemed liable to this objection. Every objection turns upon some 
particular feature of the actual charter; not one upon the principle ot a chartered Bank of the 
United States ; so far from it, he says he never entertained a doubt that ?i Bank of the United 
States, competent to all the duties required by the Government, might be organized so as to com- 



port with the delegated powers of Congress and t lie reserved rightsof the States. One of his ob- 
jections to the detail of the charter is, that it restrained Congress from chartering or rechartering 
banks in this District with a greater amount of aggregate capital than what the then existing 
banks in the District possessed ; whereas he insists on the power granted by the Constitution 
to charter banks there in any number and to any amount of capital, at the pleasure of Congress, 
In his next annual Message he, for the first time, intimatesan official complaint, confined to a par- 
ticular transaction, of the conduct of the bank ; he then recommends a sale of the public stock 
in the bank, and suggests grave apprehensions as to the safety of the public deposites therein. 

In the course of the session, the Committee of Ways and Means, to whom »hat part of the 
Message was referred, reported a bill for the sale of the slock, which was instantly rejectcdhy the 
House; upon the other part of tbe Message, the same committee afterwards (in March, 1833,) 
reported a resolution " that the Government deposites may, in the opinion of this House, be safe- 
ly continued in the Bank of the United States." This resolution passed the House by a majority 
of between two and three to one. In his next annual Message (December, 1833,) he an- 
nounced the fact of his having caused the removal of the deposites during the recess of Con- 
gress, and his reasons for doing so, in manifest defiance of the will of Congress, so recently 
and so unequivocally expressed ; and why he took that course instead of the judicial remedy 
specifically provided by law for violations of the charter. In his next Message he reiterates his 
complaints against the bank with increased earnestness, again recommends a sale of the stock, 
with a total repeal of all laws connecting the Government, directly or indirectly, with the bank, 
and the enactment of a law regulating deposites in the Slate banks. Not one of which recom- 
mendations did Congress ever adopt; but steadily, as far as depended on them, maintained in- 
violate all the original relations of the Government and the bank to the last day of its existence. 
On the removal of the deposites the House was silent, and the Senate passed resolutions con- 
demning it; nor was any law passed regulating deposites in the State banks, or having any re- 
ference to such deposites, till after the charter of the Bank of the United Slates had expired. 
Then, indeed, they went on hand in hand with the then President and with his present successor, 
organizing a most extensive and complicated system, strictly connecting the General Government 
in its financial operations with the State banks, prescribing to them a system of discipline, and 
enlisting them into the service of the United States, Then, indeed, the divorce between Gov- 
ernment and bank, of late so clamorously demanded, was as little thought of by the parties ta 
this connexion as by new-married lovers in the honey-moon. In the same Message the President 
spoke with apparent exultation of the then experienced capacity and fitness of the State banks- 
to serve all the purposes of the Government ; of course including the bank at the seat of Govern- 
ment selected for that purpose, and performing the duty in one of the most important positions. 

The public deposite::, were accordingly distributed among the State banks, from the seaboard 
to the remotest West, ^i4th an official recommendation, tantamount to an instruction, from the 
head of the Treasury, to discount upon the credit of such deposites for the accommodation of the 
community. In the first year after this change in ihe system of deposites, about two hundred 
additional State banks and branches we're created, and in the course of five years the number 
had mounted from five hundred and six State banks and branches to nine hundred and one, with 
more than a" proportionate increase in the aggregate of bank capitals, according to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury's last report to Congress. 

Now, if there be any exclusive or supereminent merit, challenging the admiration and con- 
fidence of the country, either in a fixed bank-antipathy extending to all banks, or in a particular 
and unraitigable abhorrence of a Bank of the United States, and of any " national bank," as 
an unconstitutional and dangerous institution; and if the claim of merit in such particulars may 
prevail by way of atonement for wide-spread mischiefs to the community and to individuals, 
from an over zeal and haste to exterminate all such institutions, surely the party now laying 
claim to such merit may also claim it as original and exclusive to themselves ; they share it not 
with any of their predecessors in the Executive or Legislative branches of the Government; 
far less with any of the great exemplars in whose footsteps they make it their glory and their 
boast to tread ; not one of the Presidents, Washington, or Jefferson, or Madison, or Monroe, or 
Jackson, can pretend to divide the honor with them ; and what is still more remarkable, their 
present selves may claim it equally to the exclusion and in derogation of their former selves; 
who, as unalterable records and indelible annals show, in no long time past, rested all their 
claims to public favor and confidence on a directly opposite line of policy, and were the most effi- 
cient agents in fi)stering and expanding, to the extreme limits, the very system and the very in- 
stitutions they now make a raeiit of decrying and destroying. If there be any thing in the seem- 
ing paradox maintained by some ingenious and subtle minds, that true consistency consists in 
inconsistency, as being consistent with cris^i/ig-, not with past, circumstances, then certainly con- 
sistency is not the least of their merits. 

Again: ifitbetrue, as the recent denunciations of the predominant party infer, that this 
vast and unprecedented expansion of the banking system is a pernicious excess, fostering a wild 
spirit of specuh.tion, and operating derangement of the currency and general embarrassment in 
every branch of business, then, the consequence, that these evils have followed the line of policy 
pursued by that same party, and by some of those in whose footsteps it is more peculiarly their glory 
and their boast to tread, is an induction of fact and experience not to be either resisted or enforced 
by argument. At any rate, it is clear that no part of the blame can be thrown on the banks of this 
District, They have remained stationary in number and in amount of capital for more than twenty 



years; or, indeed, have been rather diminished in both within that period. They have preserved 
a cautious and uniform tenor in their course of business that has stood the test of repeated and 
strict scrutinies. 

The policy of chartering banks was adopted by the Slates at an early period of their history, 
and has ever since gone on hand in hand with the rapidly increasing commerce, wealth, p.nd 
population of the country ; till no point, from the seaboard to the far West, the seat of any trade 
or commerce, foreign or domestic, maritime or inland, was left without its bank or banks ; and till 
the number, in 1834, amounted to live hundred and six, multiplied in the next five years to nine 
hundred and one: so indispensable have they been ever deemed by the American People to the 
prosperous pursuit of their business. 

When Congress assumed the government of the District, in 1801, we had two banks, one 
established by Virginia at Alexandria, in 1792, the other by Maryland, at Georgetown, in 1793; 
but none in the city of Washington. In the year 1811, on the application of its citizens, under 
the Presidency of Madison, and with his approbation, a bank was established at that place; and 
within a few years thereafter ten additional banks were incorporated within the District. The 
united capitals of these thirteen banks amounted to six millions of dollars, authorized for a pop- 
ulation that did not at that time amount to thirty thousand. They all at first apparently flourished, 
and during the late war aided the Government by liberal loans. Their number and capitals were 
found to be exci^ssive, and they have since, at the instance of their stockholders, been reduced to 
six in number, with an aggregate actual capital of about one million seven hundred thousand 
dollars, enjoyed by a population now little short of sixty thousand. It should, however, be remark- 
ed that, although the population of the District does not exceed this number, the District banks 
are to be considered as connected with, and in fact commercially appurtenant to, the surrounding 
country in Maryland and Virginia, embracing a population of at Ipast one hundred and fifty 
th9U?and; making in all two hundred and ten thousand. As this constitutes aliout a seventieth 
part of the whole population of the United States, it follows that, according to relative numbers, 
our banking capital would be about five millions, whereas it does not amount to two millions. 

These banks have invariably supported their credit, only yielding to the irresistible power 
of the banks in our great commercial cities in the suspension for a season of specie payments, 
and always resuming them with those banks; have conducted their concerns to the general 
satisfaction of the community ; and are, from oflicial statements, admitted to be at this time stron- 
ger and sounder than they have ever before been, and to be equally so with the best banks in 
the country. 

They have enabled the traders of the District to purchase, necessarily for cash, the flour and 
other provisions, the tobacco, and timber, and fish, with a variety of other products that reach it 
through the Potomac and Chesapeake, and constitute the staple productions of some of the most 
fertile districts of Virginia and Maryland ; to transport them, so far as they are not consumed 
among ourselves, to other places, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and 
receive in exchange foreign and domestic articles for our consumption. Of the extent to which 
this commerce has been carried, some idea may be formed by the fact that the money collected 
by the banks within this District for persons in Baltimore alone, within a single year, exceeds 
four millions of dollars. 

The charters of these six banks have been several times extended and continued, as the lim- 
ited terras of their duration were successively about to expire, and always without hesitation, as 
a matter of course and of common justice: first from 1821 and 1822 to March 3, 1836; thence 
to July 4, 1838; and thence to July 4, 1840. This last fxtension, being in the time of the 
former general suspension of specie payments, was made on three conditions, all faithfully com- 
plied with: I. Not to receive or pay any paper currency ot less denomination than five dollars; 
2. To redeem their five dollar notes in specie in the course of a month from the passing of the 
act; 3. To resume specie payments in full in the course of six months, or sooner if the principal 
banks of Baltimore and Richmond should sooner do so. 

That extensive branch of business, usually conducted hy incorporated banks, and reaching 
in its manifold operations so many of the social relations and such important interests of the 
country, has been long deemed, and habitually looked to, by the 'people of every State and Ter- 
ritory, without exception, essential to the speedy development of our vast internal resources, and 
to the general advancement of the great interests of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures. 
Upon no measure of internal policy has the opinion of the People been more distinctly pronounced, 
or their will more active and efficient. They have taken the matter into their own hands, as one 
touching the interests and mingling in the concerns of the community at large, and of every 
citizen in pariicuiar. They have called into existence and yet will the continuance of such fa- 
cilities to the convenient transaction of their private affairs us banks and a circulatinir medium 
supplied by banks afford. Even if the system were as vicious in theory and depraved in practice 
as the party now wielding the powers of the General Government insist ; even if it deserved I he 
unmeasured denunciations in which factious politicians seek pretexts, and very hollow and in- 
sincere pretexts, to gratify the selfish passions and subserve the narrow interests of party; still, 
what wise and conscientious statesman, what sagacious and comprehensive economist, no matter 
under what banner of political party he may range himself, but must perceive, at a glance, how 
utterly impracticable, and, if practicable, how rash, empirical, and pernicious the attempt te de- 
stroy it entirely 1 It needs not the wisdom or sagacity of the practical statesman or scientific 
economist; the plain sense and palpable experience of the plain man, employed in the every-day 



10 

concerns of life, are enough. He sees, as if embodied to his vision, and feels by anticipation, 
the sudden blight to every branch of productive industry, the lifeless stagnation to all the sources 
of pul)iic and piivate prosperity, sure to result from the reckless experimynts of such hairbrained 
and obtrusive meddlers as aim at the sudden dissolution of the machinery of public and private 
finance, without any intelligible model or scheme for its reconstruction ; their means ami their 
ends all certainly di-slructive ; whilst reconstruction is left to blind chance or to the uncalculated 
progress of events, or, worse than ail, to shallow projects and bungling contrivances of their own 
invention. 

The more sober and impartial thinker may have observed, in the present organization of the sys- 
tem, many errors tending to abuse and actually producing abuse ; yet calling lor all practicable, 
amendments and refor'iis, not for the total overthrow of the system itself; he would as soon pull 
down his house over the heads of himself and his family, because the roof leaked or the chimney 
smoked. The system, under the worst aspect it can assume, must be treated like some haliiiual or 
chronic infirmities of the human constitution; borne in patience, with such palliatives and grad- 
ual correctives as skilful and cautious hands may administer; not violently and suddenly torn 
from the complex frame of society, into which its manifold roots and all-pervading fibres are 
shot too deep to be extirpated without destruction to the viials about which they are entwined. 
What power, short of naked despotism, dare now dictate to the People, unprepared with any sub- 
stitute, the abolition of ail existing banks ; far more the utier extermination, root and branch, of 
the whole system of banking in every form and under every modification whatever; annihilating, 
with the system itself, uncounted millions of property, or what is available for the purposes of 
propeity, as possessing the essential attributes and uses of active and productive capital 1 By fol- 
lowing out the practical consequences of such despotic prohibitions to individuals, it will be clearly 
seen into what manifold and minute details of £>ocial l\f^' they intrude ; how tyrannieully they visit 
us in our counting-rooms, our workshops, and our fields, and leave ho private dealing between 
man and man, no recess of domestic life, free from their intrusive perquisitions : like the Egyptian 
plague of locusts, they infest our houses, bedrooms and beds, our ovens and our kneading troughs ; 
they conliol the free will and free agency of the citizen in matters which all but the worst 
governments, the worst administered, have left to his free will and free agency ; and arbitrarily take 
from him all judgment and discretion in the management of affairs, exclusively his own personal 
concern. Whether it be more convetjient and advantageous to himself to receive payment for 
his goods, or for the products of his lands, or of his skill and industry, in a portable paper me- 
dium rather than in gold and silver or other more bulky commodity ; whether he will employ his 
capital, skill, and industry in the trade of a banker (as regular and blameless a branch of business 
as any within the whole range of commercial enterprise) rather than in that of a wholesale or retail 
merchant; whether he will invest his disposable funds in bank stock rather- than in lands or other 
property ; whether he will discount his note or bill and apply it to his (iresent needs rather than 
wait for the regular day of payment ; these are but some of the more obvious, and by no means 
the most important, of the private and personal concerns upon which such arbitrary prohibitions 
undertake to dictate to the citizen, and take away from him all choice and discretion. From this, 
it is but a short and easy step to the ancient law of Egypt, now obtaining- among the Chinese, 
which dictates to each man what trade or profession he shall follow. 

That the power, dictating these prohibitions, must be despotic in its nature and tyrannic in its 
exercise; that the People, subject to its sway, must be miserable, and base as miserable if they 
tamely submit to it, you, fellow-citizens, require no argument to con«'ince you. 

It now remains for us to show you, fellow-citizens, that such an act of despotism, in its most 
tyrannic form, and to the most exaggerated extent, and with circumstances of most ajigravated op- 
pression and indignity, has been perpetrated. Kpon us; that all our lately existing banks have been 
suddenly annihilated by a single bloA' ; that we suffer not only from the negative act of a refusal 
to continue the charters of those banks, or to licence any other in their place, but from the ag- 
gressive act ofcutting up, root and bianch, the whole trade and business of banking, in any form 
or under any modification whatever, in this District; that now the whole trade and business of 
banking, in all its modes and details, down even to the simple act of placing money on deposite in 
a bank vault, is declared positively unlawful, and rigorously prohibited under grievous penalties of 
fine, forfeiture, and imprisonment: lastly, that this act, however vindictively, or from whatever 
temporary motives, it may have been enacted against us sfjecialiy, is nevertheless part and parcel 
of a oeneral plan contrived by the same party, and intended, eooner or later, to be brought to bear 
upon you, by some device contrived to pierce the ffigis of your State sovereignties; not, indeed, 
with the open and naked force by which our prosperity and our most sacred rights have been as- 
sailed and cloven down, but by operations indirectly tending to the same end, and by which the 
opposing ramparts of State sovereignty may be mined and sapped under cover of pretexts drawn 
from the delegated powers of Congress. 

Of this complaint we now proceed to the plain and circumstantial proof. 

Early in the last session due applications were made to Congress for a further extension 
of the ti;":-:e limited to the continuance of the bank charters al)out to expire on the 4lh, of July 
last. Every exertion was made, by solicitations from without and by representations within, to 
have these applications disposed of in due season. But after the offence taken at the proceedings 
of the aforesaid meeting of citizens on the 18th of February, all business having any relation to 
the interests or wants of the District lay under a dead weight. Every effort of those mem- 
bers inclined to a conscientious performance of their duties as the delegated legislators for the 



11 

District, to have its due portion of time and attention bestowed on its most urgent affairs, met 
with sullen neglect or active opposition from the majority. Some matters calling for scarcely 
a moment's consideration, and upon which there seemed, before the 18ih of February, a com- 
mon consent and general understanding that they were to be passed on as matter? of coarse, 
lay ever after under a stern interdict. At last, when the session seemed to be approaching near its 
termination, and well-grounded apprehensions were felt that the business of the Territories and 
the District might be crowdetl out, a resolution was offered foi setting apart some specififd day 
or days for taking up the business relating to the Territories and the District; and a division of 
the ^ues^ioTi being called for, so much of the resolution as related to the Territories passed, and 
all that related to the District was lost. Now, as the Territories had local Legislatures fully 
competent fur all the purposes of local legislation in general, whilst the District was depend- 
ent on Congress alone for every act of local legislation, ordinary and extraordinary, the mark 
thus set upon it was so much the more conspicuous, opprobrious, and insulting— so much the more 
a violation of all moral and political justice, and of the most sacred and imperative duty. 

It was not till near the close of the session, in tlie midst of the press and hurry usually 
attending that stage of the public business, that the subject of the District banks could be brought 
under consideration. The proposition for an extension of their charters was put in rvcry form 
calculated to disarm, if not to conciliate, their most determined and thoroughgoing adversaries. 
Indeed, roost of the forms into which it was moulded by amendments insisted on liy its adversaries 
would have reduced the banks to a condition of inertness, v^ith bare enough of life for a very 
brief span of languid existence, in one form a prolonged existence for eight months, in another 
for twelve months, was proposed ; in all, the most burdensome conditions were imposed, many of 
them evidently contrived so as to cripple the banks for any active and beneficial operation. Yet the 
banks and the community were anxious to obtain the boon of mere life on any, the hardest terms, 
Inthe most maimed and crippled state in which they could escape from the hands of their enemies, 
the banks might still have served some of the minor yet indispensable purposes of a commercial 
community; and some cheering hope of the future would have remained: but the proposition 
was linaliy rejected in every possible form in which it could be presented by its friends, or m> d- 
elled by its enemies, and all the banks without exrepticn, (even including one that had found 
itself in a condition to decline uniting with the others in the general suspension of specie pay- 
ments,) wpre at once and indiscriminately swept from existence. 

All that could be obtained was an act affording some necepsary, and barely necessary, facil- 
ities fjr finally closing and winding up the outslandinsj concerns of the banks ; for which purpose, 
and most strictly confined to that single purpose, their corporate capacity was continued for 
two years. But, in granting this boon, every possible avenue through which the community 
might derive any sort of advantage or the commonest convenience from the presence ot the 
banks during that shot interval, was studiously sought out, and industriously closed up. They 
were strictly prohibited not only from issuing or reissuing any bills, notes, checks, or ccr/'j^- 
caies ofdeposite, but even from receiving of any person whatever other than a stofkho'der any 
money or other property on deposite under an obligation to return it. So, the citizens are forbid- 
den the mere use of the bank vaults for thedeposiie or safe keeping of their money or effects; 
for, without '' an obligation to return it," it would be no deposite, in any sense, but a sheer gift 
and utter loss of the money or effects placed in the bank-vaults: it might as well be thrown into 
the sea. 

But the disqualifying consequences to the People of this District from this course of legis- 
lation, oppressive and capricious as it is, reach fur beyond the mere extinction of all our esiit- 
ing banks, without any [irovision for puttinir any thing in their place. 

in the year 1817, when a considerable addition was made to the number of District banks 
and to the aggregate amount of bank capitals. Congress deemed it expedient to confine tho 
whole trade and busines? of banking, in ail its branches and details, to the incorporated banks; 
and accordingly prohibited both the discounting and the issuing of notes or bills, or any other 
securities, orders, or promises for the payment of money, by any unchartered banking company, 
or any association, partnership, or company of indiviciuals, under penalty of fine from one hun- 
dred to five hundred dollars for each offence, with the addition of imprisoniricnt from three to 
twelve months for signing, countersigning, or endoising nny such rjotc, &c. with the loss of 
the whole amount of the note; and so stands the law to this day. 

Now, taking all the.se acts of legislation together; what the majority in Congress refused 
to do, and what they did, at the last session, in connexion with the general, known law of 
the land, previously enacted, and yet left in full force, and we have, as we have ai^serted, the 
complete, utter, and designed prohibition and extermination, root and branch, of the whole trade 
and business of banking in all its possible forms and details ; the prohibition is not confined 
to the issuing of notes and bills f)r general circulation, but extends to the discounting of a note 
or bill ; so that the simple act of taking an assignment of a note and paying to the holder the 
amount m money for which it is drawn, merely deduding the legal interest for the time it has 
to run, is within the prohibition, and subject to the penalty. We are thus forbidden reso:t, 
in any possible way, to our own enterprise and means for supplying the want occasiorjed by the 
extinction of all our existing banks — a want ju^t as imperious i*a the present condition of so- 
ciety as the want of any other trndeor profession. 

It was said on the floor of the Senate, by way of justifyin?r the rigor with which the banks 
were treated, that, when their charters were renewed in 1838 for two years, it was intended 



12 

to be for the last time; and, therefore, they should have been now prepared to wind up. Of 
this intention neither we nor, as we believe, the bank directors ever heard. But such an in- 
fen/toTi only makes the coarse of the majority in Congress so much the more inexcusable, and 
its oppression so much the more deliberate and cruel, not to the banks, but to the outraged peo- 
plc. With such an intention in their minds, the majority were so njuch the more bound to 
have provided against consequences by a well-considered and digested plan for securing to the 
people the indispensable advantages and facilities of banking in some form deemed more unex- 
ceptionable than tlie existing banks. 

It was a sufficient, and, perhaps, a questionable, stretch of power to have confined the trade 
and business of banking to the incorporated banks; but to prohibit and exterminate that entire 
branch of business in every form and modification of it, never before entered the head of any 
sane and honest legislator in such a state of society as the present, A law prohibiting the trade 
of a merchant, a carpenter, bricklayer, tailor, or shoemaker, or the professions of divinity, me- 
dicine, or law, would be neither more absurd, nor more contrary to natural justice. 

Now, fellow-citizens, look to yourselves. The State banks have been included in, indeed, made 
the principal butt of, all the most vehement denunciations on the floor of Congress against banks 
andbanknig; the chosen cover to the shame of repeated and signal disgraces from new-fangled 
and shallow projects of tampering with a currency which these projectors had found in the sound- 
est condition, and with a system of finance approved by half acenluryofsageexperiencejand, wherj 
first subjected to empirical treatment, flourishing beyond all former example. It has been also 
said openly on the floor of Congress, by men who, in our case, have been found potent in evil, 
that Ct)ngress, in dealing with the District banks, should exhibit a model fit for the States to 
follow in relation to their own banks. How soon the modesty of merely proposing models may 
yield to the temptation of actually modelling State legislation or the creatures of State legislation, 
evidently depends oa the contingency of power and means. Specie circulars have run their 
round; sub-Treasury, yet in its cradle, and a bankrupt law, aimed specially at the banks, remain 
to be tried ; and what other devices time and opportunity may develop, it would be vain to con- 
jecture. One thing is certain, there has not been a pretext devised for suppressing the District 
banks, that does not apply with equal, indeed, greater force to the State banks. The suspen- 
sion of specie payments, the main pretext and the only one having any show of plausibility, 
came froin the State banks to the District banks, who took it up at second-hand; and if the 
accessory is to be thus punished, what is in store for the principal 7 

Wo desire to be understood as by no means imputing either the motives or acts of these 
oppressive measures in relation to the bank^, indiscriminately to all the members composing the 
political party upon whom coUccLivtly such motives and acts are justly charged. We readily 
admit some individual exceptions, which a reference to the journals and debates will enable you 
easily to distinguish. 

We come now, fellow-citizens, to the second head of our complaint — an attack upon the priv- 
ileges of the people of Washington, and upon the most indispensable safeguards to the peace and 
security of the city, so outrageous as to be incredil)le, unless it had been brought under our per- 
sonal co_rnizince and experience, and vouched to the country by evidence enough to silence the 
most vvillifig skepticism. In this instance the sway of party-s[iirit, in its most concentrated es- 
sence, was undisguised and evident in every thing, except in the disingenuous;and deceptive means 
by which it pursued its darkling way to its undeniable end. We proceed to a succinct history 
of the origin and progress of this attempt, leaving the simple facts to bespeak the motives and 
objects ot its authors. 

On the 1st of June last, the regular election of Mayor, Aldermen, and Council, for the slated 
term of two years, took place under the existing charter of the city. This election seemed, by 
common consent, to havt,- been made the test of the relative strength of parties in the city in re- 
lation to the questions of general politics which divide the People of the Union ; and persons 
entertaining opinions openly and firmly op{)osed to the course of the present Administration were 
elected by a clear majority of two to one. 

No sort of com[)laint--no whisper — no murmur, bringing any way into question the perfect 
regularity and fairness of this election, was heard from any quarter. Disappointment ai.d regret at 
the political result, with the usual sense of modification in the few personally interested in the event 
of the contest, was the only feeling ever manifesUd by these who had desired and endeavored to 
bring about a different result. They imagined not the folly of attempting, for any purpose of party 
spite or political effect, to raise any controver.sy about an election so clearly unexceptionable ; 
far less the atrocity of appealing to Congress to interfere and annul it by the sheer force of legis- 
lative enactment — by the force of law, no less lawless, in the eye of natural and constitutional 
justice, than the most brutish force which the law ever punished. If such an atrocity was ever 
contemplated by any of our citizens, it must have been confined to a very few ; and those dark 
conspirators, carrying on secret intrigues which they took care to hide from the general indigna- 
tion and disgust which, at the first promulgation of such a design, would have burst in one united 
voice from the mouths of all our citizens, with littleor nodistinction of politicalor municipal parties. 

In a few days after the election, however, a petition was got up and presented to the Senate, 
under circumstances which, taken in connexion with the subsequent action on it, raise well- 
grounded suspicions of some dark intrigue, of which the agents have never been clearly developed. 
This petition specified several alterations desired in the charter, the whole of which were against 
the decided wishes of the great mass of the people, and some of them against the wishes of 



13 

many whose signatures were obtained by gross misrepresentations. But it contained not the re- 
motest hint against the late election, or intimation of any design to bring it into any sort of 
question. It set out with a misrepresentation so gross and palpable to every one acquainted 
with the provisions of the existing charter as to make it altogeiher incredible that the framers 
and promoters of the petition expected to deceive by it any member of Congress who would ex- 
amine the charter, or that the mass of the members could be deceived by it, without the conni- 
vance of the committee to whom the subject might be referred, and who could not proceed a step 
in the examination without discovering the imposture. It might well serve the temporary purpose 
of entrapping subscribers, careless as they are generally about such matters, and without the ready 
means of detecting the misrepresentation in question, even if they hadthoeght ot the matter at all. 
The misrepresentation alluded to consisted in this: that the ciiy charter expired, by its own 
limitation, in Maij, 1840, and, therefore, a renewal of the same must, from the necessity ot the 
case, be asked for. The obvious and necessary consequence from the strange circumstance of an 
election under a charter expired the month before, is not insisted on, nor, in any sort, alluded to ; 
all that matter is lell, and, it is clear from all the circumstances, studiously and artfully leit, to 
silent implication and inference, to have its effect, without divulging the cause of such effect. 

We have said the grossness of the deception must necessarily be palpable to any committee 
that should go into any examination of the subject; though with the connivance ot the commit- 
tee, it might pass on the mass of members who seldom "examine into these local matters. If 
this were not a thing of course, it is made more clear by the nature of the examination made 
necessary by the terms of the petition itself; which is not for a mere extension or renewal of 
an expired charter, but for renewal with many important alterations incorporated into it, which 
could not be effected without examination and comparison of the original charter ; and at ihe first 
glance it would be discovered that the charter, so far from having any limitation of time, partook 
more of the character of a permanent law than any to be found in the statute book ; it was to 
•^continue in force for and during the term of twenty years, [from May 15, 1820,] and until 
Congress shall, 6y law, determine otherwise j" equivalent to declaring it irrevocable during that 
term, and of indefinite continuance after. 

The promoters of this petnion, with all their exertions, fair and foul, to give it the iicposing 
appearance of numbers, obtained less than 400 signatures out of a population known to be 25,000 
or more. 

When this petition was presented to the Senate by the member selected to patronize it, a 
novel and extraordinary course was taken with it. Instead of being referred to the standuig 
committee on the District of Columbia, as had invariably been the case with all petitions for local 
objects from any part of the District, it was referred to a select committee, whereof Mr. Norvell, 
of Michigan, was chairman. 

The bill reported by ihis select committee was very voluminous and elaborate, containing 
some five or six sections more than the original charter ; which, however, is taken for the frame 
of the new one, with the alterations stated in the petition, and several others originating with 
the committee, all elaborately interwoven with the substance of the existing charter; a com- 
parison between the two demonstrates an elaborate and minute examination of that charter by 
the committee or its chairman who framed the new bill ; the very section declaring its continu- 
ance lor 20 years, with indefinite continuance afterwards till otherwise determined by law, is 
taken up in the new bill, and altered to 10 years, with a reservation to Congress of the power to 
alter or repeal it at any time. Yet this bill is entitled " to amend and continue in force the act 
to incorporate tne inhabitants of Washington;" a strange title for a hWl aicrely amending an 
existing act yet in full force, and requiring no other act to continue it in forcf ; only subject, 
like all other laws, to be altered or repealed by the legislature that enacted it: still stranger, as 
the act, instead of being continued in force, as the title of the bill says, is expressly repealed by the 
very terms of the same bill : a very suspicious title, too, when taken in connexion with the pal- 
pable imposture, on that very head, in the petition; which should rather have been denounced 
than thus implicitly countenanced by the chairman of the committee. 

After some merely formal provisions in the first and second sections of the bill, the third comes 
at once to the matter of the election, and, without any cause or reason assigned, {.roceeds, 
without ceremony, to set that election aside, and direct a new one on the first Morfday of Octobtr 
next. -^ 

Here, fellow-citizens, facts speak; the wrong, the insult to this people, the motives to that 
wrong, all stand out manifest, if not confessed. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the circum- 
sances or suspicions of low and discreditable artifices and deceptions that, if made out ever so 
Clear, could go but to aggravate and inflame superfluously what, upon great pubhc grounds of na- 
tural justice and constitutional right, ought alone to be sufficiently detestable to every good 
citizen of the Republic. 

This bill was called up in the midst of the press and hurry of business, three or four days be- 
lore the adjournment ; and, notwithstanding the general interdict laid upon District business in 
general, was pressed upon the Senate by the chairman of the select committee and his friends 
or the majority, and passed to a third reading. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the mi- 
nority who urged the want of due deliberation on its voluminous provisions, the small number 
ot applicants for a new charter, and the manifest surprise upon the great mass of the people in- 
terested, repeated motions from the minority to postpone it and lay it on the table were rejected. 
ine party for the bill seemed organized for the occasion, and it is well understood that the party 



H 

in the other House was equally prepared for its reception; how it was, the next day. arrested 
in its progress, un the motion of a member who had voted for it, will presently be shown. 

The bill was introduced with a high Hourisfi of encomium. A Senator from Ohio undertook 
to rally his party around it, as the symbol of their principles, and the test of their fiJeliiy to their 
principles; and confidently predicted the event, vviiich doubtless he knew was held under the 
thumbs of himself and his friends; namely, that on this measure, involving fundamental princi- 
ples, there would not be found the difference of a hair among his party. Accordingly it was voted 
to a third reading by the unanimous voice of that parly, comprehending all of them then in their 
places. 

We now ask your serious attention to another feature of this bill, practically, perhaps, more 
miochievous in its design, tendency, and effects, than the attack upon the freedom of elections, 
and of more fearful import to all the slave-owning States, in common with this city and District, 
standing in t!)e midst of them, with like interests and subject to like perils. This feature origi- 
nated with the select committee iiself. So far from being asked for or any wise intimated in the 
petition, we believe there is not one of its signers or promoters, good or bad, who would not, in 
common with the mass of his fellow citizens, have spurned at it if proposed. 

In the existing charter there is a long section (the eighth) conferring many and miscellaneous 
powers on the Corporation. Among others, a power to draw lotteries; and, above all, very 
large powers for the institution of an effective pulice over disorderly and dangerous persons of va- 
rious descriptions, comprehending slaves by name. The section discriminates with care the differ- 
ent modes in which slaves and free persons, white or black, are lo be dealt with and punished. 
Ill one part of the section the Corporation is empowered " to restrain and prohibit the nightly and 
other disorderly meetings of slaves, free nejjrocs, and mulattoes," and to punish the slaves by 
whipping and imprisonment, the free negroes and mulattoes by pecuniary fines. In a distant and 
distinct part of the same section, towards its end, is a distinct clause providing for the corporal 
punishment of slaves for the breach of such municipal ordinances as impose pecuniary fines, un- 
less the master will come forward and pay the fine. 

This section is taken up in the new Idll, and re-enacted with certain alterations. One of the 
alterations takes away the power to draw lotteries ; other alterations consist in expunging every 
provision relating to slaves ; every clause and part of a clause where the Vford slave appears is 
jitudiously culled and f)icked out, here and there, throughout the section. In short, upon com- 
parison of the two sections, it appears to demonstration that this was designedly and indusiriously 
done by the framer of the new bill. 

This would clearly have amounted to a deliberate and express repeal of so much of the now exist- 
ing charter as brings slaves under thecognizance of the municipal police; a repeal of every word in 
the chatter going to recognise the possible existence of any such being as a slave — of any thing 
like property in a slave — of any difference between a slave and a freeman. 

Why, and for what object, was this designed repeal, (evidently designed and industriouslj'' 
elaborated, as it appears,) is the question. 

Certainly we must acquit the framer of the bill, its chairman, and the select committee, of the 
malignant and horrible design (^that is, as a primary and. principal design) to expose the people of 
the city, and all sojourners here, the committee themselves, to the appalling dangers like to ensue 
from the total exemption of slaves from all supervision and restraint of a conservative police, as 
this bill would have exempted them ; to give them, by repealing a provision prohibiting and pun- 
ishing " nightly and disorder/?/ meetings," a clear license to hold " nightly and disordeily meet- 
ings," without any possible control from the municipal police; whilst the nightly and disorderly 
meetings of free negroes and mulattoes were still to be prohibited and punished. 

What other motive, design, or consequence, then, can be assigned to this most extraordinary 
procedure 1 

Surely no other than such a motive or design as the act itself imports; no le^^s consequences 
could have been intended than such as necessarily or naturally would have followed the act itself. 

This repeal, then, would have ainoonted to a disclaimer or renunciation by Congress of any 
such condition as slavery, of any such property as slaves : it would have been equivalent to an 
admission of the most ultra doctrines of the most ultra abolitionists; and have left the door of 
Congress wide open for enunciating the theoretical proposition, and giving to it all the effect of 
law— that slavery cannot, in the nature of things, be established or permitted by any human in- 
stitutions, however positive, no matter how high or imperative soever the authority whence they 
are derived : that the force of all human laws, whether fundamental constitutions or ordinary enact- 
ments, all yield to the paramount force of natural and divine law. 

No motive or desiorn worse than this need be imputed ; none better can possibly be inferred, 
if any motive or design whatever is to be inferred from a solemn, deliberate, and carefully weighed 
act of legislation. 

Here also, fellow-citizens, we leave the facts to speak; and if what they speak is to be gain- 
said, most certainly it must be by other/acts, or by a contradiction of these, not by argument. 

This bill was passed to a third reading, as we have said, by the unanimous vote of the party, 
rallied and specially invoked to its support. Among them were several Senators from slave- 
owning States, These, doubtless, were kept in the dark as to these most dangerous and far- 
reaching implications of the bill they were voting for. It would have required a minute and 
critical comparison between the corresponding sections of the existing charter and the bill to dis- 
cover them; and it may be well supposed they did not give themselves the trouble, in the hurry 



15 

and confusion of the moment, to institute such a comparison, and had no preconceived suspi- 
cions leading them t© it. What apology or explanation, if any, they received from their colleagues 
and associates in the party convoked to the support of the bill, fur palming such a measure 
upon them, we know not. 

So it is that, the next day after the passing of the bill to a third reading, a Southern Senator, 
who had vaied for it, renewed a motion, before made by one of the minority without success, to 
lay it on the table, and there it was laid accordingly. But for this, the bill would have passed; 
and if there had been lime for the amendments necessary to quiet the particular scruples of the 
Southern Senator:^, it would still have passed, with all its other and no less enormous trans- 
gressions against conscience, and against every principle of natural justice and constitutional 
right, on its head. 

The same Senator who was so sensitive, and justly sensitive, to such vices in the bill as he 
discovered, and oujrht to have known from the first, trenched upon the peculiar interests and 
principlesof himself and his State, recoiled not from the summons of party to perpetrate positive 
injustice upon us, and to trample in the dust all the principles necessary to have invested with any 
transcendent merit the pride or the patriotism that led him, at the last hour, to recant an inadvertent 
error against the interests and principles of his own Stale. The bill, in all other respects, yet 
hangs over our heads, like a sword suspended by a hair ; and at the next session is doubtless to 
be again made the touchstone of party strength and predominance, unless rebuked by you in 
the mean time. 

We might go on to point out other provisions in this bill, militating, and we fear designed to 
militate, against the peace, good order, and prosperity of the city. But with these we must be 
cbnteni to wrestle as we may ; we have designed to trouble you only with such matters as, in 
point of practical importance, and the value of the principles involved, may well claim the se- 
rious regard of the nation. 

We deem it unnecessary, fellow-citizens, to say anything in vindication of our original, in- 
herent, and absolute title to all the privileges of freemen — of Republicans, in a land of law and 
liberty; our title to restrain the Government, placed over us, within all the limits proper for free- 
men and Republicans in a land of law and liberty; within the strictest limits of the Constitution; 
within the limitations of the Government from v\hicli we were taken when transferred to. this; 
within the necessary and understood limitations imposed by natural right and universal justice, 
in cases not reached by any of the positive provisions ot a written Constitution. Any contrary 
notion of the power implied by the grant of " exclusive legislation" in the Constitution, leads to 
endless absurdity, or, what is worse, to a virtual dispensation, not only here but everywhere, from 
all the most indispensable restraints and limitations of power in the same instrument. Could 
any rational man expect that the selfsame Government could act the despot and tyrant, reign 
over abject slaves, disenthral itself of all constitutional restraints, in one place, and, in every 
other place, be the subdued, moderate, and circumscribed creature of the Constitution; submissive 
to the reserved rights and authority of the States, fearful of overleaping any constitutional boun- 
dary, and sensitive to the will of its constituents 1 Then Ut him expect to see Scripture falsi- 
fied ; to see the Ethiopian change his skin, and the leopard his spots. 

Let such a man imagine such a state of things at the seat of Government as new-fangled trea- 
sons, bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and general warrants; habeas corpus and jury trial 
taken away ; patents of nobility and an established church, with a suppression ot all dissenters 
in religion ; and all other of tiie abominations upon which the Constitution has placed the mark 
of indelible reprobation: ihen let him think with himself, no matter of what Siateor Territory 
he be citizen, with what alacrity and ardor he would maich to the overthrow of a Government 
so seated, no matter how inoffensive its conduct might happen, for the time, to be out of the im- 
mediate sphere of its prescriptive tyranny. 

Take another hypothesis rather nearer to the matter in haud; liberty of speech anii freedom 
of the press, put down and extinguished at the seat of Government; your local de.*pot shrouded 
from all observation, within a dark cloud, extending its murky reign ten miles round ; impassable 
to the light of the press; overshadowing poor awe-struck slaves, who dare not utter one word 
above their breath displeasing to their masters; then say what would be the value of liberty 
of speech and freedom of the press out of the bounds where they were jiroscribed, and where 
alone liberty of speech and freedom of the press can obtain the most necessary materials for 
their functions to operate on. 

No : if there be one place within the wide bounds of this Republic where, more than in any 
other, the deepest interests of the Union call for the most active .spirit of liberty, f..r the habitual 
cultivation of the most high-toned and manly independence, that place, above all others, is the 
Seat of Government. 

We have no fear, fellow-citizens, of your falling into speculative errors so monstrous; and as 
little of your tailing to perform with good faith the duties dictated by your relations to the Con- 
stitution and to us. In that confidence, we, for the present, remit our cause to your hands. 
Signed by order of the Convention. 

WALTER JONES. 



Henry J. Brent, Secretary. 



Chairman of the Convention. 



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014 369 566 9 6 



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